Bookmark

Quantitative Biology > Molecular Networks

Title:
The Problem of Colliding Networks and its Relation to Cancer

Abstract: Complex systems, ranging from living cells to human societies, can be
represented as attractor networks, whose basic property is to exist in one of
allowed states, or attractors. We noted that merging two systems that are in
distinct attractors creates uncertainty, as the hybrid system cannot assume two
attractors at once. As a prototype of this problem, we explore cell fusion,
whose ability to combine distinct cells into hybrids was proposed to cause
cancer. By simulating cell types as attractors, we find that hybrids are prone
to assume spurious attractors, which are emergent and sporadic states of
networks, and propose that cell fusion can make a cell cancerous by placing it
into normally inaccessible spurious states. We define basic features of hybrid
networks and suggest that the problem of colliding networks has general
significance in processes represented by attractor networks, including
biological, social, and political phenomena.